


incommunicado.

by orange_crushed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Freeform, M/M, Season/Series 09
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-12
Updated: 2014-03-12
Packaged: 2018-01-15 10:39:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1301878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything he touches is like this. He is so much bigger than you used to imagine, so much stranger, you finally see it- now, when it’s too fucking late. You finally feel it. He moves and the rest of you float in the wakes, the current. You’re the leaf the stream carries away. You’re a drop of water and he’s the moon that rocks the sea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	incommunicado.

He says it, and you don’t understand. Words you didn’t know you were waiting to hear. You think other people know what to say, know what to do, at moments like this: television’s full of them, happy people falling against each other, crushing each other in their arms. But he says it and you stare at him across the shed. You don’t know what to do. You’ve been fighting, screaming at each other. He’s working with the goddamn devil. You want to hit him so much your wrists ache. You want to fall off the side of a cliff so you can feel the wind in your face; you want him to walk the six feet between you and take your face in his hands. You want to be left alone.

“What,” you start to say, and you can’t finish. You start another sentence instead. “The fuck you want me to say to that?”

“I want you,” Castiel says, “to understand.”

“Understand what?”

“The things I do,” he says, raggedly. “What I do them for.”

“You do what you want,” you say. “I can’t stop you.”

“Dean, I-“

You put your hands over your ears like a child, until he’s gone.

 

 

 

He is lying on the floor with a bloody face and you are holding your hands against his cheeks, your palm against his mouth, to see if he is breathing. He isn’t at first, and then he is, in gasps. “Dean,” he says, like it’s the last word he can form; or else the first, the beginning. “Dean.” There are dark veins climbing his throat.

“It’s okay,” you say. “You’re okay.” You know you’re lying, but to who? Nothing will ever be okay again, not the way it was.

When he goes into the reservoir you are watching from the banks, helplessly; you see him go under, while the water rolls out from the spot where he disappears. Everything he touches is like this. He is so much bigger than you used to imagine, so much stranger, you finally see it- now, when it’s too fucking late. You finally feel it. He moves and the rest of you float in the wakes, the current. You’re the leaf the stream carries away. You’re a drop of water and he’s the moon that rocks the sea.

 

 

 

He says it a second time in front of the portal, just before he lets you go. You are still screaming for him when the light closes around you, when he disappears. You kneel in the dirt of the world you left and holler for him and he can’t hear you. Later you will tell Sam you’re seeing him, in the rear view mirror and the corners of your eyes, in the window after dark. But you’re seeing him behind your eyelids, too; in the moments when you first fall asleep and you can still feel yourself as a body in a bed, a blank weight against the covers. He says those words to you in that fading instant, while you lie prone and drifting in stiff motel sheets and clutch your empty hands into the blankets. He says it over and over and you don’t want him to stop. In your dreams you go back, you wrap your fingers around his wrists and fall back into hell, into agony and clarity. You don’t let go. In your dreams he runs his thumbs under your eyes and says, _why Dean_ , why, _they will never stop hunting us_. But you don’t feel afraid.

 

 

 

You say something like it to him; finally, helplessly, while he is bashing your face in, breaking the bones in your nose and cheek and smearing blood across your eyes, his red right hand. He is still holding the wrist he shattered and he’s warm. You say it and everything stops. He leans down- you think for the kill- and holds his bloodied hand against your jaw, his palm solid and comforting, and you’re whole again; when you look up at his face you recognize it. It’s yours in reverse. It’s the face you gave him whenever he said words you couldn’t possibly deserve, and he couldn’t have meant.

“No,” you tell him, because you know what happens next. Those words always made you leave, shut you down like an engine out of fuel. He’s not very different, you think. You know he isn’t. Your words weren’t the same as his, but they meant the same thing. “Please,” you say. But by then you’re talking to air again, and he is gone.

 

 

 

He is a human man now and he’s cut himself shaving: he is going around cleaning the kitchen with little pieces of toilet paper stuck to the corners of his face. Sam taught him that. Sam has been handling that kind of stuff while you pace the confines of the bunker and go for long drives and don’t speak to anyone except Kevin, mostly about angel shit. But now you’re watching him stack the plates he washed and dried by hand and put them into cabinets, working almost silently without looking up. You don’t know if he’s aware of you yet, of your eyes on him. He’s not an angel anymore, and you walk quietly when you want to. You can’t stop looking at the stupid little pieces of toilet paper on his face. It ought to be funny but it breaks your fucking heart.

After a while he looks up from where he’s sorting silverware and he says, “Oh, Dean,” in a neutral voice, he sets down the fork he’s holding.

“Don’t, uh,” you say, “let me interrupt.”

“Am I in your way?” he says. He looks around at the kitchen. It’s big enough for two people- probably five people- to work around each other easily, but Castiel shifts himself in his seat like he’s concerned about you needing your space. It’s probably your fault. You’ve been stomping around and ignoring everybody, eating at weird hours, the bunker’s own personal troll in the dungeon.

“No,” you say. You stand in the doorway and he watches you, and then you come closer and sit in the chair next to his. He stays perfectly still like a deer, eyes wide, hands curling into fists on top of the table. “Do you,” you try to start, and feel like an idiot. “You used to, uh, you said some things to me once, and I just wondered-“

“Yes,” he says.

“Yes like,” you fumble, “like you _remember_ , or yes like-“

“I’ve changed,” he says. “But that hasn’t.”

You’re not close enough, suddenly, not nearly close enough for this, there’s no way you can handle talking about this like a reasonable person if you’re not touching him. You slide off your chair and onto your knees and open your arms and he leans down into them, pulls you into his lap between his legs and puts his face against the top of your head. Your face is pressed into the front of his shirt and you’re breathing cotton wool and detergent and him, clean and warm and human and alive. He’s breathing hard and holding you even harder.

“Can we do it right?” you say, into his chest. “Can we try again, say that stuff and not- can we say it like other people say it?” He untangles himself from you a little and cups your face between his hands.

“I don’t know how other people say it,” he tells you, solemnly. You laugh because it’s true, it’s finally funny instead of terrible, it’s so funny your sides hurt and your eyes are leaking, and he kisses you on the mouth and you hold him by the fabric of his shirt and kiss him back. “I love you,” he says, whenever you pull away for a second to breathe, in between pressing his mouth over yours again. “I _love_ you, Dean, I-”

And you know just what to say.

 

 

.


End file.
